SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec. 20, 1999 - In its drive to enable service providers to optimize revenue and profits from packet-based networks and cap their investments in time-division multiplexing (TDM) networks, Cisco Systems, Inc. today announced the newest addition to its IP+ATM family of carrier multiservice products: the Cisco MGX 8240 private line gateway.
The Cisco MGX 8240 is the only high-density private line gateway in the industry today capable of offloading carriers' private line TDM services onto an integrated multiservice ATM packet infrastructure. By building a packet network to deliver private (leased) line services, carriers can cap their investment in legacy TDM technology and reduce operations and management costs by up to 70 percent. Compared to TDM-based private line services, which can take many weeks to provision, private line services can be provisioned in hours when using the MGX 8240 in an ATM packet network. This enables carriers to start collecting revenue almost immediately. By investing in a multiservice ATM packet network, carriers can simultaneously expand their offerings to include frame relay, ATM and MPLS-enabled, value-added IP services that are increasingly in high demand.
Private line services are the most prevalent network services in the world today, representing nearly a $24 billion revenue opportunity for service providers*. The demand for corporate private line services that reliably and cost-effectively transport data, voice and video continues to increase. To offer private line services, service providers have traditionally deployed TDM networks using digital cross-connect systems (DCSs) that take up large amounts of space and require extensive grooming for efficiency. As single-purpose platforms that must be managed separately, DCSs are costly and inflexible, erode profits and increase time to market.
"Growth in private line services continues to rise, and with more than $24 billion in annual leased line service revenues at stake, service providers need to turn up reliable and value-added services faster than the competition in order to be successful and profitable," said John Morency, executive vice president, Sage Research. "The Cisco MGX 8240 private line gateway is an excellent product that can serve as a crucial building block in the migration from circuit-switched networks to packet-oriented networks. Its high performance, flexibility and very cost-efficient private line gateway technology should give carriers the opportunity to reduce their cost of doing business while increasing profitability."
The Cisco MGX 8240 replaces traditional DCS equipment with a new-generation, high-density ATM edge platform that supports automatic flow-through provisioning across a scalable multiservice packet network, enabling carriers to turn up private line services more quickly while benefiting from the industry's lowest equipment and operations costs.
"Cisco's high-performance private line solution provides crucial elements Williams Communications needs as we deploy high-volume private line services along the world's largest private line packet network. The MGX 8240 gateway offers a very cost-efficient means for enabling the highest availability for Williams' enhanced DS-1 private line service," said Joe Turcotte, senior vice president and chief operations officer of Williams Communications' network. "Additionally, Cisco's continued services and support has enabled us to create new revenue streams from other value-added services we can now offer to our customers."
Williams Multi-Service Broadband Network is an integrated fiber-optic network whose architecture couples ATM core switching with advanced optical networking technologies to provide carriers with data, voice, video and Internet services over the platform they choose. Williams' nationwide fiber-optic network is the fourth largest in the United States with more than 25,000 miles of fiber in the ground. Williams plans to complete more than 33,000 route miles connecting 125 cities by the end of 2000.
Highest Density Private Line Gateway Speeds Access to New Service Revenue
Based on technology from Cisco's acquisition of Sentient Networks, the Cisco MGX 8240 offers the industry's highest carrier-class density with 1260 channelized T1s per chassis. Service providers can configure up to 45 channelized T3 access interfaces and 15 ATM OC-3c trunk interfaces to increase provisioning speed for additional bandwidth and services and achieve a wide-scale transition of private line traffic.
With its software-based cross-connect capability and direct, standards-based ATM interfaces, the MGX 8240 allows service providers to provision private line services in a matter of minutes-instead of the typical weeks or months required by traditional TDM DCS equipment. Carriers can rapidly turn up private line services, and leverage the same ATM transport for other offerings, such as IP virtual private networks (VPNs) enabled with MPLS, applications hosting, call-center and e-business services.
The MGX 8240 is designed for 99.9999 percent availability and offers redundancy protection and automated protection switching (APS) to deliver "always-on" private line services. It also provides built-in support and network management, including a full complement of intrusive and non-intrusive remote testing, troubleshooting and automatic monitoring functions.
The product complements Cisco's complete line of carrier service gateways and multiservice switches, including the MGX 8220 service gateway and the MGX 8850 multiservice IP+ATM switch. Cisco's MGX product family provides a comprehensive solution set that delivers the best of both IP and ATM.
"No other vendor today offers a solution with end-to-end provisioning and extensive diagnostics capabilities required for high-volume private line services," said Kevin Kennedy, senior vice president of Cisco Systems' service provider line of business. "With the MGX 8240, carriers can significantly increase their packet network revenue from the private line market and be well positioned to offer new, value-added services that will ensure additional revenues, profits and growth."
The Cisco MGX 8240 received the 1999 InfoVision Award in the Public/Private Networks Category from the International Engineering Consortium of service providers, manufacturers and members of academia. The InfoVision Awards recognize outstanding innovation in technologies and are selected from hundreds of nominees based on uniqueness, market impact, customer benefits, and value to society.
Pricing and Availability
The Cisco MGX 8240 private line gateway switch is available now. Pricing for the product starts at US$20,000.
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*Vertical Systems Research 1998
